Pardew’s Palace Hammer Sunderland 4-1 – Leicester And Villa Win

Written by Dr. Ed Harrison

5:20pm Saturday, April 11th, 2015

Commented 95 times

Alan Pardew’s Crystal Palace are going from strength to strength, and after the half-time score at home to Palace today was 0-0, Palace blew the Black Cats away with four goals in the first 18 minutes of the second half before Connor Whickham scored in stoppage time with a consolation goal.

It’s a pity for the Black Cats that it’s not every week they can play Newcastle and win a game – in the last three seasons they have taken 16 points out of a possible 18 against Newcastle.

Alan Pardew and Dick Advocaat today Palace have 26 points in 13 league games this year Yannick Bolasie – who is a star player for the London side got a second half hat-trick, and that takes Palace to 11th place and 7 points above Newcastle, and this year they have gained a massive 17 points on the Carver-led Magpies.

So it was a great move for Alan Pardew to move to Palace – at least for Crystal Palace it was – and Alan wins his first game against Sunderland since August of 2011, when we won 1-0 at the Stadium of Light.

If Alan continues this phenomenal run, he’s going to be Manager of the Season again – for his third manager award in just three years – after he won two of them for getting Newcastle into 5th place in 2012.

A monumental achievement given how Mike Ashley keeps selling out best players, so it’s almost impossible to build a good side.

Palace now have 42 points after 32 games, so we suppose Alan will get that rumored £1M bonus if he keeps Palace up, and that’s 26 points from their 13 league games so far this year.

One relegation side coming through at the moment are Leicester City, managed by former Newcastle coach Nigel Pearson, and they came from behind at West Brom to win 3-2, and now have 25 points and two wins in a row.

Jamie Vardy scored a sensational stoppage time winner for all 3 points, and they are now only 3 points form being safe with a game in hand.

Hull remain in a slump and on 28 points, one point behind Sunderland.

Aston Villa side took all 3 points at Tottenham and that’s a massive 3 points for Villa and who scored – who else – Christian Benteke – and that’s a fabulous 8 goals in his last seven games.

Villa are on 32 points and now are just 3 points behind Newcastle.

With Stoke drawing with West Ham 1-1, they are in 10th place on 42 points but have a much superior goal difference than Newcastle.

We are just waiting for Lee Charnley to come out and say 10th is still the goal for this season.

The powers that be at Newcastle should have thought of that in January before they wrecked our season – for the second year running.

95 comments so far

Who cares!? He’s gone for goodness sake, and it was the right thing for all parties. As average as he is/was him going has highlighted the real issue, and even the press are starting to realise it now. The tide is turning, momentum is building and Ashley is being shown up more and more for what he truly is.

Pardew needed to chose what players he wanted . We would have had more guys like bolaosie and andy carroll and we wud have been mid table. Obviously this wudnt be good enough though for the loons. Please boycott spurs game

i think everyone’s forgetting we’re short 8 injured or suspended first team players.

it’s hard to really blame anyone when you’ve got that many players out.

does anyone really think a Mourinho would get many points out of a team with central mid options being Gouffran, Abeid, Jonas, anita & cb options being williamson janmaat or even Satka, who isnt good enough to make the bench with 1 recognizable cb in the squad.

its easy to get pissed at carver or ashley (though both obviously deserves some blame)…but sometimes luck is just against you.

The most common term used to describe Pardew is ‘average’ these days. Well its only the fact we are running out of games that’s going to stop him being manager of the season, is it not? Face it…and I know it sticks in your craw,,,he’s a capable manager, he’s not only kept Palace up but he’s done a top quality job there. It was Ashley all along. People say we are keeping Sunderland up? It may yet turn out, after todays result at the Stadium of Sh*te that Pardew has kept us up…on two counts.

It’ll be interesting to see the excuses from the Pardew admirers once his usual terminal velocity nosedive occurs. Up to now, the players are on their best behaviour and will be swept away with fan support with their wooden nosed messiah.

I understand your point, I myself was critical of Pardew, I stand by it even though I think I may have been over critical.

I think the style he plays, when given the right players, is similar to Pulis, strong target man for long balls and pacey wide men to attack the flanks….it’s not as boring as people like to make out as it can be frenetic and fast paced.

However these managers with that style have a ceiling lower than managers who play a more technical game.

I accept both styles can achieve mid table, even maybe 9/10th but ultimately to build and progress a more modern style is needed.

However under Ashley with his tight purse strings and poor appointments we won’t ever really get any better.

Luck is not against us at all, teams get injuries. We went into January knowing at best we had 2 fit CBs for the rest of the season (both poor and over 30 with recent injuries) yet we still chose not to buy or loan, can’t then be shocked when one of those get injured.

We have 1 prem league quality striker, we can’t be shocked if that players gets injured/banned, it happens.

We had plenty options in midfield, could have used a central 3 which held its own against top teams this year, abeid, colback and sissoko but for some bizarre reason carver picked a terrible team.

The football he played with us didn’t work, he couldn’t adapt to a different type of player and plan a style which would be more consistent, a good manager would do this, an average manager is just good with his own, one style.

I’d be surprised if Palace aren’t in the midst of the relegation dogfight next season. That’s me factoring in that they don’t really belong in the Premier League and are punching above their weight as it is, coupled with a man notorious for horrendous second season syndrome.

In terms of his time at NUFC, Pardew was hamstrung, but I refuse to feel sorry for the bloke. He willingly put himself up there as club mouthpiece for Mike Ashley and defended the indefensible. Given that we know next to nothing about Graham Carr’s remit perhaps you’re being a bit over zealous with your criticism of him?

Either way, if Pardew wasn’t able to do his job to the best of his ability at NUFC, and Carr wasn’t able to do his job properly to the best of his ability at NUFC, who is the one man that could potentially be responsible for that being the case?

Wouldn’t be the one man whom several of us have been lamenting about for the past 4/5 years? (Some have been lamenting for even longer!)

Well said. If the players are at fault we tend to blame the manager, so surely if the manager is at fault we should be looking at the director/owner.

When you run any big business you need to make sure that the right people re in place, those around you making decisions are key to that. Hiring people like Llambias and Penfold only show how poor Ashley is.

He wants nothing more than cheap mediocrity at the very best.

I initially sympathised with Pardew, he was given a shot after being sacked by league 1 southampton and our fans hated the appointment, therefore he had little leverage. However once he got the 5th place finish he should have shown some balls. He should have demanded quality players and blamed the board….if he got sacked then he would have had tons of options, won the fans over and been perfectly fine even if he was sacked.

Three more points for safety – what a pathetic predicament to be in. All of the blame for this lies with M A and the majority (not all) of lazy unprofessional players who have no pride playing in the black and white colours of Newcastle United. When you see teams like Leicester and Burnley playing their guts out for the shirt and then you see the our lot throwing tantrums when the break a nail. With Liverpool up next we can expect a hammering on Monday and probably will get one !

Ciaran pardew inherited a squad of players with pace, something you need to play attacking football, we play better when Aarons is fit he gives us something we need. They like all teams have goal scorers, we have one (cisse) who is suspended. This season has turned out exactly as how I predicted. When a club has a team made up from mainly budget players which lack pace and quality you end up with Nufc.

I never said he hadn’t, he has beeb brilliant for them, totally turned it around. Now he took over from warnock, who either gets teams relegated or gets the sack, so obviously an average manager would improve on a very poor one.

Palace have some good players, they have zaha, bolasie, jedinak, puncheon….not world beaters but have pace and quality in spells.

Again, we know nothing about the process of appointing John Carver head coach. However, is anyone surprised that he got the job given what we know about Ashley? Ashley doesn’t trust people easily. He has a tight ship of lackeys around him, and I would include Graham Carr in that bracket at this stage. The reality is that if you are a coach, a director, a PR rep, media guru or supporter’s liaison officer at NUFC, you are complicit in the wrongdoing of Mike Ashley – who is the most complicit of all.

Sage

We’ve been saying it for too long. Targeting Pardew was thinking too much in the short-term. I don’t think half as many people would have been targeting him if they considered John Carver would get the job, but my question to these people, is why did they not consider that possibility given how Ashley has operated?

I have to say that targetting Pardew has turned out to be genius, although the reasons behind it by many were not.

What it has done is remove Ashley’s main general. The guy who would take the flack, make excuses which the media would go along with and (because he had finished 5th) would allow the media to criticise us “fickle geordies” as they would put it.

Now that he has gone he hasn’t got that same level of respect from the media, people question why he would go (makes Ashley/the club look bad) and most importantly he doesn’t have a stooge who takes the blame but does enough to pick up crucial points.

What that means is managers coming in will think twice about working for him, will be harder to attract that manager who takes the heat from the fans but is still capable of doing enough on a budget..

He has also let the squad become threadbare, which means serious signings must be made to compete in the league come the summer.

I think Ashley has been careless and allowed things to slip too far. focused too much on rangers which crumbled before his eyes, he is currently on borrowed time and as a fan base we must strike now whilst the iron is hot

But let’s bear in mind that the targeting of Pardew probably had little (or nothing) to do with his departure from the club. Had Palace not come in with an offer to prise Pardew away for a few million quid, Pardew would still be our manager. He was never going to be sacked and he was never going to walk.

While Ashley may be more vulnerable to criticism now Pardew is gone, the fans didn’t precipitate that – money did.

Although I do think there is merit in your argument that Ashley himself may have been thinking too much in the short-term by letting Pardew go, as he now has to invest in the summer (regardless of who is the manager ahem I mean head coach) and he may also have to sign a new head coach if he doesn’t trust Carver to do the job of keeping us up.

Or, MA may have simply let Pardew walk, let the squad become painfully thin, and refuses to invest another dime because he’s in the process of selling up? We can but dream eh?

Transfer the whole club is run on a very tight budget, which is also managed by MA, not P45 and now Carver. Mash makes the decisions, he doesn’t want success, that costs also players demand higher wages. MA knows as long as we stay up for the tv money thats all that counts. He’d take 17th over 6th every time. Talk about a gamble to maximise profits!

JD I hope you’re right! But on their track record I’m not brimming with confidence. Ciaran We know Pardew, Carver, etc. are just symptoms of the disease. TS Do you think Charnley would go against Carr’s advice in this situation?

Regardless what pardew did here c palace went to scumberland and played them off the park the makems needed the points more but could not cope with palace give pardew some credit He has better players than us jc is being shown up for what he is a useless nomark who when put in charge cannot do it he has lived off the rep of other managers and been even more lucky than ameobi to still b here nufc hold on to classless players or coaches to long when other teams would have got shot of them years ago like i stated days ago i could not give a rats arse if we lose the next seven games we deserve it nufc deserve it f#/# the lot of them and do something useful with your money or keep on turning up and have the p$#$ taken out of u by better teams and a more vocal support

Now you’re talking! At this point Ashley has a number of decisions to make. Does he retain Carver invest more heavily than in previous years? Does he tinker with the squad but sign a new (better) head coach? Or does he tinker with the squad and retain Carver? The latter of those 3 options is almost certain to end in relegation though!

Of course he would, he will do anything he is told by Ashley to keep himself in a job.. It’s not about going against his advice though.

If Carr recommends 5 managers, then Charnley speaks to these 5 and can’t wither agree wages, compensation deal with their club or convince them the club match there ambitions then they won’t come, regardless of what Carr does/says.

Therefore, if we can’t get a manage to sign that we want then what other options do we have? It has to be somebody at the club, therefore the options are limited to carver or berdsley.

We are in trouble next year even if we sign messi and ronaldo with carr in charge, Pardew like square pegs in round holes but carver takes that to a whole new level with his team for the derby.

Then carver even has worse press conferences, saying things like ” a win is good but I’d rather have 3 points” or that “we all take blame, even down to the tea lady”…..he reminds me very much of “we are all in it together” David Cameron, tax cuts for the rich, nothing for the poor..

I’d be surprised if Carver is not in charge next season though. Ashley has a propensity for not only the cheap option, but the “will do whatever I say” option. Carver has proven himself loyal in that regard and as such is valuable to Ashley. I am sure with a bit more media training from Wendy “trout lips” Taylor and that charlatan Lee Marshall, Carver will be up to speed with the way things are done at the club.

Unless this appointment is accompanied with 5/6 additional signings to the squad we already have, then we are in big trouble next season.

Pardews a decent manager but was really not suited to NUFC. His tactics suit Palace. Deep containment football, fast wingers and a physical striker. Hes walked into his ideal squad. Fair play to him, hes been complimentary about nufc fans since he left, coukd have easily turned the knife to make his job here look better than it was. Pardew going was always best for all parties but hiring Carver was a woeful decision. Im not even sure hes the best choice of manager already employed at the club? Seems out of his depth and the press conferences are getting more and more obscure. hes coming across increasingly desperate

health update

My latest checkup was yesteday and after a battery of tests the results show the cancer remains stabilized and has not spread further.

Some background - I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in February 2017 after being in remission for six years. and I completed four months of intense chemotherapy in late July.

The cancer metastasized through the bones and one treatment available I am undergoing is hormone treatment.

There is no cure for Stage 4 cancer and I will continue to have exhaustive blood tests about every three months and CAT-scans and bone-scans when necessary.

I will do my best under the circumstances and I take this as another challenge - a big one.

Ed Harrison

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